Overview

Celica Ayatsuki Mercury is the younger sister of Konoe A. Mercury, and aunt of Kokonoe. She is one of the main protagonists in the Phase Shift novels and appeared as an NPC character in BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma before becoming a playable character starting from BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma Extend onward.

Drive: Minerva

By pressing the D button, Celica can perform combo attacks with her robot partner, Minerva; the chain goes into a starter, an attack, and a finisher. Celica's Drive sees heavy use in combos. During Drive attacks, Celica can't block or move normally; consequently, when hit-confirming, knowing whether or not it's safe to confirm into a Drive string is crucial to playing Celica well.

Unique Ability: Recovery Capability

In BlazBlue: Central Fiction, Celica possess the ability called "Recovery Cap", which allows her to generate blue health. You gain Recovery Cap by using Drive attacks, or by guard-pointing the opponent's attacks with certain special moves, such as Marteau Flan, Lance Quinche or Hache Rotir. You can then either heal back this blue health by automatically going into a healing animation after using the third Drive followup in a combo, or by using Armure Sorbet. Alternatively, you can use the Recovery Cap to use the charged versions of Marteau Flan and Lance Quinche. Unlike in BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma, the charged versions of these moves can no longer be done without Recovery Cap and when they are used, they'll consume the blue health that has been generated. However, the charged versions of Marteau Flan and Lance Quinche have both been buffed to compensate for this.

Overdrive: Rege Light

During Overdrive, Celica's HP is passively restored (this effect increases the longer she remains completely untouched) and will also passively gain blue health as well, while her Drive attacks become Distortion-cancellable. During Overdrive, Armure Sorbet restores more HP, Sabre Anglaise lasts longer and deals more hits, and Casque Voulete does more damage.

2C

2C is a great pressure tool for resetting pressure because of its ability to vacuum the opponent, but it is minus on block. The vacuum doesn't pull the opponent in too much though so you need to manage the pushback from your blockstring carefully to get the most out of this as a pressure reset.

6A

At 24 frames start-up, -8 on block, no meterless cancel options, and a conversion only in the corner, 6A is not a great overhead. However, depending on the distance from your opponent, the first overhead hit can whiff, allowing the low to hit when the overhead otherwise would. With meter, 6A(1) > RC > into either j.B or IAD > j.B represents a good overhead starter for a true 50/50 mixup that's easy to confirm and leads to good damage.

xDxDD

New in CF is this new automatic follow up after the new universal 3rd D attack in a chain. It'll heal any blue health you have accumulated. When used strategically, it's good for getting back a good chunk of your health. If you don't want to use up your Recovery Cap, you can special cancel the last D attack to avoid automatically canceling into this.

Charged Lance Quiche follow up doesn't work on Jin, Noel and Rachel for some reason. 214[C] only hits Jin with the front of the attack and goes completely under Noel and Rachel while they're in the air. Switch 214[C] with 214[B] for follow up which can be combo'd after.

Distortion Drives

Armure Sorbet

Armure Sorbet is mostly only good overdrive combos aimed specifically towards healing back as much health as possible. If you do the right combo from low enough health, it's possible to heal back about half your max HP, which is pretty useful.

Celica commands Minerva to kick in front of her. If it connects, Minerva proceeds to perform a series of attacks on the opponent. Puts Celica in Active Flow if she hasn't already been in it already. Has full invul and is safe on block, but it has no minimal damage and cannot be rapid-canceled.